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Taurus ushers in a time of slowing down and enjoying life's simple pleasures, says Daniel Sowelu

May starts out looking like a much better month, with the Taurus Sun birthing a series of processes that are both empowering and sensitising, offering us possibilities of being able to combine these seemingly contradictory processes.

Of course, to create true individual potency is to build an effective balance between classically empowering archetypes with those that open up our capacity vulnerability, empathy and compassion.

Taurus has a way of slowing things down so that we can catch our breath, take stock after periods of challenge and change, to get reconnected to our bodies and its needs, taking time to smell the roses and appreciate the simple pleasures of life. This tonality is reinforced by a particularly sweet sextile to the Moon in Cancer, swinging her lunar light onto heart, hearth, family and loved ones in general.

Both Sun and Moon send good aspects to Neptune in Pisces, ones that gently open us up emotionally, spiritually and creatively to the subtler realms inside ourselves as well is to the general psychic environment around us. It accentuates our psychic radar, supports greater internal fluidity and moves us more into the intuitive right side of the brain, allowing for greater receptivity to insight and vision.

However, is not a classical Taurean month, as we still have lots of energy in Aries, and the often placid Taurean Sun is lining up with some big powers, including a conjunction with Medusa and a series of fluid aspects to the awesome conjunction of Hygeia, Juno, Kali and Pluto in Capricorn. The first 10 days of the month then is a deeply fertile time for combining the mystical creativity represented by Neptune with the psycho-sexual and relationship healing energies of Hygeia and Juno, and the related transformative powers of Kali and Pluto.

Normally, Taurus tends to resist change that is out of its control but in this case he is rolling into becoming like Nandi, the mystical bull who carries the great yogi god of transformation, Shiva. (Note that Pluto can be seen as a Western version of Shiva, while Kali is the latter's consort, Shakti.)

So we have another great opportunity to move with our deepest energies and their evolutionary demands, a great time for healing, deep psychotherapy, transformative and tantric practices of all persuasions.

Many of you will remember how intense the April full moon was, one that activated hard aspects to the same Hygeia/Juno/Kali/Pluto conjunction, a rather big, dredging push for purification and real change. This Sun in Taurus brings a different quality to the equation, one that allows for a slower but necessary integration phase after big and challenging movement internally.

It is not an exclusively slow or stable movement during May though; the same Mercury Uranus conjunction in Aries that made late March so chaotic repeats itself at the start of the month. This will be an exhausting yet exhilarating period of unpredictable openings intellectually, spiritually, even neuronally that can bring tremendous insight and transcendent awareness, while often over straining the nervous system.

Fortunately, both Mercury and Uranus simultaneously trine Saturn in Sagittarius. This is a particularly brilliant alignment from a practical point of view as Saturn provides the necessary infrastructure, including stronger capacities for self discipline, focusing and manifestation, to be able to make use of new insights and creative pathways revealed by the Mercury/Uranus link. Saturn acts as a lightning rod for the high voltage of Uranus.

You might be relieved to hear that Venus, who in April retrograded back into Pisces to hang out with Chiron the wounded healer, a passage overseen by the harder edges of Saturn, has just re-entered Aries. This rather gravelly situation was hardly comfortable for the goddess of love, with both Saturn and Chiron more intent on healing of old wounds, particularly to do with abandonment issues, father hunger and negative parental conditioning around our hearts.

In Aries then, she gets to build up her love fire and passion as she extracts herself from swampier territory. She reconnects with her lover Mars currently in Gemini, while getting a series of boosts in the middle weeks of the month through connecting positively to powerful goddesses in the form of the Black Moon, Pallas Athena, the two healers Hygeia and Hecate and, finally, Lilith.

The presence of a number of serpentine goddesses in this mix is certain to add that much more juice to our love lives.

Anything not working here will go under the blowtorch of hard truths though!

As for Saturn and Jupiter? Both are now retrograding and in rather slow motion, with Saturn moving between 27 to 25° during the course of the month and Jupiter slowing right up to an unusual eight weeks of being stationary at 13° of Libra, usually a two week passage and one starting now!

In doing so, Saturn continues his reconnecting with his mythological father Uranus, a balancing of stability and innovation, conservatism and revolution, of earthy realism and visionary perceptions that makes this such an exceptional time, despite the other, grungier purificatory processes.

And, if you have anything at 13° in any sign in your chart, you will be enjoying a prolonged and ultimately expansive transit from the jovial gas giant, Jupiter. Even though he may go over the top at times, he is a reminder of the essential benevolence of life. Enjoy his graciousness!